Hello everyone
This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact ED colin at kantarainitiative dot org.
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Spring is here... but who knew! At least the time slew is behind us with Kantara's northern hemisphere community moving forward an hour while our colleagues in the south move back ifor for winter. Activity Certainly, activity levels in Kantara definitely have a spring in their step with that optimistic, anticipatory feel to them.
February has seen an unprecedented level March saw a continuation of high levels of downloads from our Reports and Recommendations web repository . Downloads are more than double year on year, primarily due to the strong reporting of our Blockchain Smart Contracts Report from mainstream media. While you heard it here first several months ago and also by following @kantaranews on Twitter, we re-ran the story again early in February. In just a 3 day period during the month we hit 118 downloads. Good download numbers were posted by UMA 2.0 and Consent Receipt as well, since these tools help with GDPR compliance. With enforcement just over 3 months away, organizations the world over that have digital relationships with EU citizens are looking for products and services to help them meet the deadline. February has been a great month for new memberships too, and we have pleasure in welcoming that have been evident since the begining of the year.
March also saw a high level of renewing members and new members. For the 3 months ending March 31st, we welcomed new members iWelcome from the Netherlands, Trunomi from the Carribean, DataFund from Denmark, Reliable Identities from the US and , Unify Solutions from Australia, Sphere Identity from New Zealand and Dylan Woodburn as an individual contributor.
We started the first full week in the month at the TIIME workshop in Vienna. This event really helps Kantara value its engagement with the Higher Ed community. I believe that Kantara is the only non-profit in the digital identity space to sustain a relationship that results in such fantastic knowledge-sharing. The value of this knowledge sharing is how it draws others to Kantara who are eager to both soak up and extend those riches. That aside, for many attendees the highlight was the workshop dinner held under the dome in the renowned Natural History Museum in Vienna. Unforgettable grandeur and splendour. Later in the month, EEMA - Kantara's most active European liaison - hosted me in Brussels at its members Fireside, on a topic close to us all - the future of identity and trust. Three speakers graced us with their perspectives. The stand-out presenter for me being Bart Preneel from Leuven University. His presentation was based on a thought provoking premise that, in the future, security and privacy will turn full circle to be better maintained and assured on local devices rather than cloud based networked services.
The early months of the year give me a great opportunity to acknowledge and thank selected member organizations for their support as I undertake my semi-annual round of 1:1 calls with Directors and Trust Marked Service Providers and Assessors. These folks provide much of the fuel for the monetized engine room of the organization that allows many of you reading this to enjoy the benefits of low barriers to participation in Kantara's working groups and discussion groups, either through their Directors dues or support of Kantara's 'raison d'etre' - the Trust Framework Operations program. As the only global 'non pay to play' consortium in our industry, and in support of our ethics based and mission-led culture, we should remember just how hard a business model it is to operate. It’s a model that Kantara's contemporaries won't even try. Without the Directors, Members, Sponsors and Trust Framework participants stepping up to the plate, Kantara would not exist. It's fitting then that in OWI's recent 'top 100 Influencers in Identity', 14 of them were Kantara members. See them here in Kantara's own press release. Speaking of members, have you completed the Member Survey? Tell us what you would like Kantara to do in 2018 and beyond.
Meanwhile, look out for new deliverables coming out of our work groups. The We welcomed back renewing members New Zealand Goververnment (Dept of Internal Affairs), Nixu from the Netherlands, SecureKey Technologies from Canada, Cirrus Identity from the US and individual contributors Andi Hindle, Mikael Ates and William Nelson. It's great to have you all with us here at Kantara and we look forward to working together with you to advance the industry.
As they often do for me, the month began with calls to our members. In this instance our Approved and Trust Marked credential service provider Zentry, that part of the Verizon/Synchronoss partnership that provides the identity-related services. My first conference of the month was the London leg of the Event Creation Network's KYC and AML Summit series. I moderated a panel primarily focussed on privacy and was joined on the stage by Paul Simmonds, the lead for the non-profit Global Identity Foundation, Gouri Khatua, most recently with RaboBank before commencing her own GDPR consulting firm, and Charlie Walton from Mastercard. These conferences follow a different but quite successful mash-up of keynote, panel and workshop with the same folks showing up year after year.
By mid-month my focus was on our many liaisons. The first was drafting our Liaison Statement and reviewing our comments on ISO 29184 (Guidelines for online privacy notices and consent) ISO 27552 (Enhancement to ISO/IEC 27001 for Privacy Management - Requirements) to go to ISO SC27 WG5 for the upcoming meetings in Wuhan China later this month. A few days later saw me discussing the role Kantara could play in the ONC's Trusted Exchange Framework Common Agreement in US Healthcare together with Kantara members Experian and ForgeRock in a dial-in call to the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, all the while advancing no less than three separate bids for H2020 EU grant funding via Kantara Europe, and finally, 'circling the wagons' for Kantara's panel at the KNOW Identity conference with panelists Mary Hodder from IDESG, Scott Shorter from Kantara Accredited Assessor KUMA, Tracy Hulver for Kantara Approved CSP ID.me and Leadership Council Chair Andrew Hughes. The topic was 'Service Provider Certification: Who Cares Anyway?'. We worked through what certification is, the different stakeholder perspectives, and we had some great comments from the full house.
The much heralded members-only release of the Service Assessment Criteria for the NIST SP 800-63-3 Guidelines for Digital Identity, for identity & credential service providers is imminent, was released on Thursday, March 22nd. It was both a pleasure and relief to see the final product after nine months of effort by a small band of dedicated volunteers in the Identity Assurance Working Group. Thanks again to ID.me for supplying editing resources. And UMA Legal, the sub group of UMA has produced a ground-breaking draft report that adds the 'B' (business) and the 'L' (legal) to the 'T' (technical) that comprises the essence of the UMA specification.
If your organization has something it wants to accomplish, please don’t hesitate to contact me to explore how you can fund work or discussion group activities.
'Spring forward!'
Stand by because we have new deliverables from other working groups poised for publication.
There's more to come folks - much more.
Kind Regards,
Colin
Around the Houses:
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You can always find us online: https://twitter.com/KantaraNews and https://twitter.com/UMAWG and https://twitter.com/KantaraCISWG.
- Miss something? See our press releases here.
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Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
Consent Management Systems best practice WG has a fantastic turnout for its opening calls is seating its editor for the first tranche of work. Thank you sponsors iWelcome and digi.me. The Kantara community salutes you for your support.
You can always keep up with the latest news from the Work Group and Discussion Groups directly off the Leadership Council's Blog.
- Join them here
- Consent Receipt v1.1 is being prepared for publication just in time for those last minute preparations for GDPR!
As always our Specifications, Recommendations and Reports are available for download from our Reports and Recommendations web repository.
Not sure where to find things? Staff are only too willing to assist. Contact them via email.
Events: See them all here!
- KNOW identity conference in Washington DC March 26 - 28. Look out for the Kantara panel slated for Monday March 26th 2.40pm comprising members Mary Hodder, Scott Shorter, Tracy Hulver, Andrew Hughes moderated by myself, where we will discuss the topic 'Identity Service Provider Certification: Who cares anyway?'. If you're attending, please come along and join in on the conversation.
- Book travel Kantara's first own-brand Summit for Marketing, Media and Privacy now May 22nd in London is ready for ticket purchase at £495 or if you are a Kantara member, at 30% discount using this code K3022 on Registration.
- Later that week, you'll find me in Helsinki with longstandingKantara member Ubisecure, and hosts of IAMwithUBI where I deliver the afternoon Keynote.
- Register now for the Kuppinger Cole hosted European Identity & Cloud Conference in Munich for a combined Kantara AGM and European members plenary on Monday May 14th during the day, to give you all enough time to refresh, reset and attend the Blockchain ID Innovation night, and prior to Kantara's own pre-conference workshop the following morning Tuesday 15th that curtain-raises the formal opening of the conference.Kantara's first own-brand Privacy Summit for Marketing and Media now May 22nd in London is ready for ticket purchase at £495 or if you are a Kantara member, at 30% discount.